back me here up guys

well, I have one of those "know it all friends" that got a x800 for his Athlon xp,2.1ghz system. Im trying to explain to him that it was kinda a waste of money, because he isnt getting the full potental out of the card. The rest of the system is bottlenecking the card. I created this thread to show him, mabie it will make him understand

so guys, am I right

shellshock said:

well, I have one of those "know it all friends" that got a x800 for his Athlon xp,2.1ghz system. Im trying to explain to him that it was kinda a waste of money, because he isnt getting the full potental out of the card. The rest of the system is bottlenecking the card. I created this thread to show him, mabie it will make him understand

so guys, am I right

Click to expand...

yes, your mostly right. 3D01 and 3D03 will show you that. in 3D05 I dont think its gonna make much difference because 05 is nearly pure GPU, but there will be a drop.

If your trying to fill a tank with a bigger tank, and you cant pump out the gas fast enough, its gonna overflow..... (thought that up in about 5 seconds, cut me some slack on it )

The video card is only as fast as the pc that feeds it. Having a faster video card will allow him to run at higher resolutions with less framerate loss, but his framerates will still be mostly dictated by his processor. With his previous card, he might run 800x600 at 30fps. Now, he can run 1600x1200, but he will still get 30fps. His processor cannot feed the video card any faster.

Ex. I have an Athlon XP 2600+ overclocked to 2.2ghz with a Radeon 9100, and an Athlon64 3200+ with the Ati integrated X600. In pure video card speed alone, the 9100 is about 50% faster than the X600, yet in many games, such as Battlefield 2, the X600 gets higher framerates due to the faster processor feeding it.

05 shouldn't show a huge difference, but 03 definatly will. Between my 1.7GHz system and my brother's 3.4, there's a 1000 point difference on 03 with my softmodded and OCd 9500. His X800 should have an even more noticible difference once you upload his scores to the ORB.

JigPu

ummmmm bottlenecking thanks for posting this shellshock.
i need to look into this more

I don't think it's a bad idea to maximize the vid card if you are a gamer. There will always be a bottleneck with any system. If the CPU turns out to be the bottleneck in this situation, he can easily upgrade to a nice cheap used Barton 2500+ mobile CPU and overclock it. That should help out a lot.

I just upgraded from an XP-M 2600+ @ 2.5ghz to an A64 3200+. In 03 I saw a base(XP-M @ stock and A64 @ stock) of 3,000 points. XP-M ~7,000 and the A64 ~10,000. In 05 there was no major difference. XP-M 4,750. A64 4,798. Both systems used my X800 Pro.

At 2.5ghz and the video card at 575/585 I scored 11,769 and 5958, respectively with my XP-M. On the A64 with it still at stock and VC at 575/585, I got 11,629 and 5,874 respectively. Even if I get the A64 @2.5ghz, I dont think there will be a huge jump in the numbers.

In games like HL2, and Doom 3, I dont see a huge difference. There may be a change of 10-15 FPS in real gaming experience, but nothing dramatic. So, while the CPU may not be the best for the video card, he certainly wont regret getting it.

shellshock said:

so guys, am I right

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I dont think you are 'right' so to speak. He is getting so close to the 'full potential' of his card, that it doesnt matter about the CPU that much. Not in real world gaming that is.

Is it a 2.1ghz Athlon XP, or a 2100+?

Yuriman said:

Is it a 2.1ghz Athlon XP, or a 2100+?

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Good question. I assumed he was talking about a XP 2100+, but the first post does say XP 2.1 gig.

i was not going to ask a question on this. about bottlenecking but here we go.
if my cpu running at 2.2 to 2.3 would my bottleneck be my 9800 then ? if im reading this right

Well, you could have a good vid card and nicely overclocked CPU and be crippled by crap PC2100 RAM. But, assuming your RAM is running smoothly at 1:1 ratio with decent timings and you have adequate amount of memory, then a CPU oveclocked at 2.2 to 2.3 gig should be more than enough for a 9800 vid card.

batboy said:

Well, you could have a good vid card and nicely overclocked CPU and be crippled by crap PC2100 RAM. But, assuming your RAM is running smoothly at 1:1 ratio with decent timings and you have adequate amount of memory, then a CPU oveclocked at 2.2 to 2.3 gig should be more than enough for a 9800 vid card.

Click to expand...

My brother had that untill he upgraded to athlon 64. When he still had his 9800pro, gaming was way better with the 2.7gig winchester than the 2.4 gig XP. In any case, the cpu will still be the bottleneck as long as you are running an XP and any 9800pro or above.

Just to put my experiences in here too.

I had a 9800pro on a PIII750@840. Sure it was a lot faster than my old video card but the processor was really holding it back.

No I didn't buy the video card for the PC but I saw a good deal so I bought it before the rest of my next PC.

Still, he will definitely get an improvement over his previous card, even though he won't be getting the "full potential"